Tourism Marketers Must Go Bold and Inclusive to Meet New Traveler Priorities

As North Americans leave home in bigger numbers this summer, after over a year of restricted movement, their mindsets and priorities have clearly shifted. This changing outlook is what destination marketers will need to continue tracking closely using all available channels, from social conversation insights to traveler sentiment polls. Should they still lead with a safety message? Should masks continue to appear in the inventory? Social media marketing agency Sparkloft Media’s new spring 2021 traveler sentiment report, to be published later this week and shared exclusively with Skift, reveals how North American travelers are ready to move on from the gloom and doom of the past 15 months of messaging. "Travelers are ready to see images and content of people and groups together and activities that they maybe couldn't do during the pandemic, people are ready for that tone that is a little bit higher energy," said Gio Palatucci, director of research at Sparkloft Media, a social media marketing agency focused on the travel industry and using social sentiment research to define market trends. Palatucci added that the kind of emotion and conversation that Sparkloft Media was seeing now is that while safety is important,